Tokenism in Politics
In politics, allegations of tokenism may occur when a political party puts forward candidates from under-represented groups, such as women or racial minorities, in races that the party has little or no chance of winning, while making limited or no effort to ensure that such candidates have similar opportunity to win the nomination in races where the party is safe or favoured. The end result of such an approach is that the party's slate of candidates maintains the appearance of diversity—but members of the majority group remain overrepresented in the party's caucus after the election, because the more competitive nature of the candidate selection process in winnable seats continues to favour them over other groups.
However, political parties which actively implement strategies to increase the number of women and minority candidates in competitive races may conversely be accused of engaging in affirmative action or reverse discrimination against the majority group.
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